Expiration Date
by It'sTimeToDance
Summary: I've expired like old milk.
1. Chapter 1

_Quote I made up that I wanna put somewhere but I'm afraid I'm gonna forget in five minutes:_

_**Whitecoat: Nothing special about this one...**_

_**Max: What, the wings don't do it for you?**_

I forced my feet to slide through the carpet, into Dr. Martinez's clean tiled bathroom. My hair lay in greasy shags around my face, hanging in my heavy eyes like little curtains, the only thing protecting me from the unforgiving morning light. I was sure--and this is coming from a girl who spend her formadive years in a _cage_--that children waking up at six thirty in the morning was cruelly inhuman.

The tiles assaulted my nerve endings like ice cold water, sending chills up my legs, my back. I shivered. I'm flushing whoever invented the public school system down a porter-potty. See if I don't.

Dr. M.,---and _Jeb_---thought that, get it, we need a _formal education_.

Bull-fucking-shit.

I looked in the mirror, the reflection blurry through my hazy eyes. No growths, no second heads, no noticable deformities. Good day, I think.

I scooped my hair from my face, blinking back the sleep. I scratched my neck, stretching my arm over my head, my muscles stiff.

Something caught my eye, making my stomach instinctivley knot. I twisted my head, searching for it.

There. A black speck. I wiped it with my hand.

It didn't come off.

I rubbed it again, hard, until my skin was raw. It remained where it was, not fading nor smudging nor anything I wanted it to do.

Pitch black against my skin. I twisted my head until I could almost see the wall behind me.

It was seperated into thin, even lines, thick, then thin, then thick again.

Like a bar code.

I was clawing at it now, a sudden white flash of panic obstructing all sense and logic. I think I screamed.

No. No. _No_.

This wasn't happening. This. Was. Not. Happening.

I was fourteen. _Fourteen_. I didn't even _have _a life. First ten years in a cage. Next two years on the run. Six months in middle school.

I didn't know what I was doing when I screamed, again, in a semi-coherent language I could partially understand, "Fang! _Fang! _Jeb! Mom! _Fang!"_

I was sobbing, tears thick in my chest, still clawing at the back of my neck like a cat on a scratch board. My knees wobbled, knees painfully chattering against each other. Blood trickled down my neck.

"Max? Max?" Fang banged at the door. It was locked. I was still crying, letting the shit crash down on me like a wave. I fell to my knees, I think. Clawing. Scratching. Tearing.

I heard the crack of the door as someone forced it open. Someone was screaming. At _me_. Someone was curling their hands around my wrist, holding them together like make-shift handcuffs. I struggled, screaming something like, "Get it off, God fucking damnit, _get it off!_"

I heard my mom saying something, heard the kids crying. Fang was saying something, too. Jeb was somewhere, I think, his voice a murmer among the chaos. There was a desperate screaching, that of a dying animal. I think it was coming from me.

"Get what off?" Fang was cupping my face in his hands, holding my head in place, like he was afraid it would fall off, "_Get what off?_"

"Jesus..." Thankyou, Jeb, for the words of wisdom.

I think Fang saw it now, because his fingers tightened around my chin, pushing it to the side. He froze.

"No...way..." was what he said.

"What? _What?_" my mom was saying.

My chest hurt. My head hurt. I was crying. I was saying something.

"Get it off. Jeb, _get it off_." Fang hissed. His hand was warm against the stinging skin.

"I...can't."

"_Bullshit!_" he roared.

"I can't...reverse it. It's part of your genetic code. Your the longest lasting hybrids...it's a miracle---"

"I don't _fucking _care!" Fang screamed, "_take it off_!"

"What are you _talking _about?" Mom said, frantically.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: I was looking back on this story, and I realize I left it off in a really awkward place. It's like three in the morning, so sorry if it seems kind of weird.**

_"Cause the hardest part of this_

_is leaving you."_

-"Cancer", My Chemical Romance

"How long?" My voice was pathetic. Weak. Cracking in too many places. Angel and Nudge hugged my knees as though that alone would keep me planted in my skin. I couldn't see Jeb, but I could feel his hands on my neck, running his fingers over the tattoo, like he were trying to rub it away. I couldn't breath.

"Jeb," Fang said. "_How long?"_

His response was like a fire, burning everything I cared about into ashes.

"Two days."

--

The next day, I suffered what normal people would call a _nervous breakdown. _

We're not normal, so I'm not sure what we could call it. A Max-out, or something. Not a breakdown, though. That's for poetic, femme fatale authors with six kids and a one room apartment. No. A Max-out is a perfect term to describe it.

Whatever your calling it, I freaked. Flew off in panicked tears, off into a clearing somewhere, fell into the pine-cone littered grass, and cried my eyes out.

It was dark before I stopped.

--

"I don't want Max to die," Nudge sobbed, gripping Angel against her side and pounding her little fist on the table top, rattling the unwashed dishes.

Iggy and Gazzy were in a zombie like state of shock, now over their ear splitting shrieks of early stage grief. I watched them sit silently on the sofa.

Max had flew off. Started sobbing, out of no where, flipping things over and pulling at her hair and clawing at her skin like an animal. Scared the shit out of Angel and Nudge. No one went after her, just out of fear she would gauge out eyes out. That was last night, and it six in the morning. I don't think anyone slept.

Today. It's that simple.

"I'm going to look for her," I said, getting up from the table--and the terrible, grieving noises that came out of it.

It was almost time. She shouldn't go alone.

"Tell her I love her," Dr. Martinez whispered, hugging a sniffling Ella to her chest. "Tell her we all do."

--

My heart was like a tether ball, pounding against my ribcage so hard I'm surprised something didn't snap. The sky was orange with a rising sun, peaking out from in between the tree branches.

I

Was

Dead.

"Max."

I twitched my head, and saw him standing there, a lone dark figure in a bright, sunny world. It wass oddly comforting.

He sat down beside me, and wrapped his arms around my shoulder, so that my face was pressed up against his chest. Just like that. No greetings, no words of freaking wisdom, words of comfort. Just..._that._

I think I started crying again, because he was making shushing noises, like I was a child who'd scabbed her knee. I didn't care. Life sucked right now. I just didn't care.

"After all this," I whispered into his shoulder, "after everything we've been through. I go like _this."_

He didn't say anything, but I felt his muscles twitch and his back shake. Was he crying too?

"It'll be you too," I cried--more screamed--shoving my fist into his arm. "Your the closest to my age. None of us...we're _mistakes _Fang. Disposable. It's gonna be all of us...Nudge'll never be a famous movie star. Angel...God, she'll be all by herself..."

Yeah, he was crying. Softly, quietly, but he was. He knew it. We were like milk. We've been served, now we're rotten and moldy, just sitting there. They can't leave us running around.

We sat there for a while, like an hour, before I started to feel something.

Like a sudden shock to my heart, and a jab to my abdomen. A pang of pressure pressed against my scalp.

I gasped, and shook some more. Fang felt it.

"God, no," he whispered against my hair.

My breath felt restricted, and spots danced in my eyes like bugs.

I love you, I want to scream, I love you. I love all of you. You don't deserve this.

My God, it's cold.

"Fang," I whispered, my voice shaking.

It was not dramatic, and no other words were exchanged. It was just a matter of something being there, and then nothing. Darkness. Fang was gone.

I had expired like old milk.

_A/N Good lord, this is crap._


End file.
